Guided Tours of Hell: Novellas - Softcover

Prose, Francine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1480445487 ISBN 13: 9781480445482

Publisher: Open Road Media, 2013

Synopsis

An “irresistibly readable” pair of novellas skewering Americans abroad—by the New York Times–bestselling author and National Book Award finalist(The New York Times Book Review).
 
“In a style that is bold, witty, richly detailed, and suffused with a wry subtlety,” Francine Prose offers penetrating portraits of Americans in Europe who have brought all their baggage—ego, ambition, sexual desire—with them (Elle).
 
Guided Tours of Hell
When the insecure (and rightfully so) playwright Landau travels from New York to Prague to read at the first annual Kafka conference, he’s certain this is his chance to prove himself—and his work. But he quickly finds himself upstaged by Jiri Krakauer, a charismatic Holocaust survivor whose claim to fame is a long-ago death-camp love affair with Kafka’s sister. On a group tour to the camp-turned-tourist-attraction, Landau sets out to prove that Krakauer is lying—with unexpected results.
 
Three Pigs in Five Days
Ambitious young journalist Nina has been stranded in Paris by her editor and sometimes boyfriend, Leo. When he finally shows up, playfully suggesting a romantic tour of the catacombs, prisons, and shadows of the City of Light, the bloom begins to come off the rose for the infatuated Nina—who must ask herself how much of herself she is willing to sacrifice for love.

About this title

Review:

These two novellas about Americans abroad combine to create one wallop of a book. As they confront the legacy of history and their own shortcomings, Prose's characters are obsessively self-aware, even narcissistically petty--just like we are. In the title story, Landau, a struggling playwright, engages in a vanity-laden struggle of wills with a charismatic Holocaust-survivor in the cafeteria of a death camp-turned-tourist-attraction during a Kafka symposium. In the second novella "Three Pigs in Five Days," Nina is sent to Paris by her boss and ex-lover to write an article about a whorehouse-turned-hotel. While there, she is plagued by the demons of her erotic past as well as the romantic ghosts of the dysfunctional relationships of dead Parisian artists and their mistresses. Always harrowing, occasionally baroque, and tinged with hilarity, Guided Tours of Hell is an early candidate for the best fiction of the year.

About the Author:

Francine Prose is the author of sixteen novels, including A Changed Man, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Blue Angel, a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent works of nonfiction include the highly acclaimed Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer. A former president of PEN American Center and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Prose is a highly regarded critic and essayist, and has taught literature and writing for more than twenty years at major universities. She is a distinguished writer in residence at Bard College, and she lives in New York City.

About this edition

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1480445487
• ISBN 13: 9781480445482
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 220